Creating Records By Importing a Zone File

If you're migrating from another DNS service provider, and if your current DNS service
provider lets you export your current DNS settings to a zone
file, you can quickly create all of the records for an Amazon Route 53 hosted zone
by importing a zone file.

When the name of a record in the zone file includes a trailing dot (example.com.), the import process interprets the name as a
fully qualified domain name and creates a Route 53 record with that name.

When the name of a record in the zone file does not include a trailing dot (www), the import process concatenates that name
with the domain name in the zone file (example.com) and creates a Route 53 record with the concatenated name
(www.example.com).

If you use the GoDaddy export process to create a zone file, you might need to edit
the zone file to add a trailing dot to MX records
before you import the zone file into your hosted zone. The export process currently
doesn't add a trailing dot to the fully qualified domain names of
MX records, so the Route 53 import process adds the domain name to the name of
the record. For example, suppose you're importing
records into the hosted zone example.com and the name of an MX record in the zone file is mail.example.com, with no trailing dot.
The Route 53 import process creates an MX record named mail.example.com.example.com.

Important

For CNAME, MX, PTR, and SRV records, this behavior also applies to the domain name
that is included in the RDATA value.
For example, suppose you have a zone file for example.com. If a CNAME record in the zone file (support,
without a trailing dot) has an RDATA value of www.example.com (also without a trailing dot), the import process creates
a Route 53 record with the name support.example.com that routes traffic to www.example.com.example.com.
Before you import your zone file, review RDATA values and update as applicable.

Route 53 doesn't support exporting records to a zone file.

To create records by importing a zone file

Get a zone file from the DNS service provider that is currently servicing the domain.
The process and terminology
vary from one service provider to another. Refer to your provider's interface
and documentation for information about
exporting or saving your records in a zone file or a BIND file.

Enter the name of your domain and, optionally, a comment. Note that the comment can't
be edited later.

Click Create.

On the Hosted Zones page, double-click the name of your new hosted zone.

Click Import Zone File.

In the Import Zone File pane, paste the contents of your zone file into the Zone File text box.

Click Import.

Note

Depending on the number of records in your zone file, you might have to wait a few
minutes for
the records to be created.

If you're using another DNS service for the domain (which is common if you registered
the domain with another registrar),
migrate DNS service to Route 53. When that step is complete, your registrar will
start to identify Route 53 as your DNS service in response to
DNS queries for your domain, and the queries will start being sent to Route 53
DNS servers. (Typically, there's a day or two of delay
before DNS queries start being routed to Route 53 because information about your
previous DNS service is cached on DNS resolvers
for that long.) For more information, see Making Amazon Route 53 the DNS Service for an Existing Domain.

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